Village side suffer 5-0 loss on last matchday of the season

Embarrassing defending saw Desford concede four goals in a mad nine minutes, and with a late penalty they went down 5-0 against FC GNG, writes Stewart Bint.

In his last game in charge, manager Owen Wright said the players let themselves down, let him down and let the club down.

Up to the last 20 minutes there was no hint that Desford’s final match of the current Leicestershire Premier Division campaign would collapse in such dramatic fashion.

They had played well and created more chances than their visitors; the best coming right on the stroke of half-time, Jordan Small heading over the bar at the end of a fine move involving Matt Banton, Adam Willett and Simon Goodman.

Other attempts included Stacey Coore’s penetrating through-ball giving Luke Wilson too much to do to reach it, and a couple of opportunities from Goodman and Small working well together.

But after Desford left Sunny Johal unmarked to head home at the far post in the 70th minute, the floodgates opened. Keeper Tom Smith, who was named man-of-the-match for a string of excellent saves, took on too much by challenging two GNG forwards, allowing Rishi Jadav in for the second five minutes later.

Lewis Halliday rounded Smith to tap the third into an empty net after Banton lost the ball on the edge of the box in the 76th minute, and at the end of Desford’s nine minute meltdown Smith saved well before Elliott Phillips knocked in the rebound.

Such was GNG’s confidence at this stage that they even sent their towering keeper Norbert Rutkowski up into Desford’s penalty area but he failed to convert an 85th minute corner.

Just when the hosts thought their afternoon could not get any worse, Coore was red carded two minutes from time after the referee judged he deliberately handled in the box and Johal’s spot kick wrapped up the scoring.